The California Department of Technology (CDT) held a CalCloud Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) End User Forum on Wednesday, November 4, 2015 at 9AM. More than 70 users from 16 Departments attended the forum in person or virtually. The message throughout the forum was one of change to CDT’s culture, transformational change and transparency.

The forum was kicked off by Chris Cruz, CDT Chief Deputy Director of Operations. Chris level set the audience with a discussion on how the State Data Center is transforming to a service based organization to adjust and accommodate emerging technologies. He also discussed decisions being made on the CalCloud architecture before turning over the podium to Robert Schmidt who was recently hired as the CDT Office of Technology Chief.

Hence Philips of the California Department of Food and Agriculture

Robert discussed the roles and responsibilities for the End User Group participants, and introduced the new End User Group lead, Hence Philips of the California Department of Food and Agriculture. Hence provided an end-user perspective on the ins-and-outs of using CalCloud IaaS services.

Kyle Pribilski from IBM and Scott MacDonald, CDT’s CalCloud Director

Scott MacDonald, the new CalCloud Director, along with Kyle Pribilski from IBM provided a more transparent approach on the architecture and service offerings of CalCloud. David Langston from OTech Security Management closed with a presentation on security requirements and compliance related to NIST and the FedRAMP framework.

Robert Schmidt and David Langston of CDT

The forum provided an interactive opportunity for departments to better understand the services offered and ask in-depth questions about security, architecture and system migrations to CalCloud.

Future forums will be established on a monthly basis to allow attendees to provide feedback on what has been working and suggest enhancements that would be benefit business and technical needs.

The CalCloud team took the action item to send out a survey to attendees to gather input on improving the End-User Group forums.

August 22, 2011 – Christy Quinlan gives a presentation about state technology services for the public at the Technology for Military Charity Event sponsored by the Armed Services Alliance Program (www.4awisermilitary.org). To assist veterans reentering civilian life, the program was founded in 2004 by Aaron Bryant, former Airborne Ranger – Special Operations soldier for the U.S. Army. Bryant now works as a Data Solutions Architect for Franchise Tax Board.